Public Involvement This Good Doesn't Come Cheap

The team running the Bridgeasaurus Boondogglus shows their dedication to facilitating public involvement with the Calendar of activities for the project, taken 30 minutes before the first of two workshops today, Wednesday, 3 December.

"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

Fight GIGO! Take the Fantasy Funding Survey

GIGO is the old wisdom from early computer days, a reminder that no process is better than its inputs, so garbage in gets you garbage out.

The gangsters running the 3d Bridge scam have resorted to Survey Monkey surveys on Salem's willingness to spend imaginary money for an imaginary benefit with no alternative uses for the money considered in the mix. It's pure garbage of the rankest kind.

An unscientific funding survey is a particularly deep crock of GIGO because we actually know quite a bit about how to identify preferences for spending -- there's nothing more well studied in America than how to know what people are willing to pay for things (which is often quite different from what people will tell you, or that they even realize themselves).

So the only reason for this little joke of a survey is to allow the con men (CH2M-Hill) running this very cushy racket through their obedient pets at ODOT ($60k/month corporate welfare for the last seven years, with millions more in the pipeline) to collect some propaganda nuggets they can try to use to sell their product to the rubes ... Which is to say, us, the people of Salem.

The deep, abiding cynicism of Salem's Bridgasaurus Boondogglus Crew is a marvel to behold. It's our own little version of life as it is lived in many little banana republics and African barely-nations, where the gangsters on the top ignore the needs of the people and instead build themselves massive, useless projects funded by debt that ends up bankrupting the people and lashing them to debt for generations.

It's the oldest story in public administration -- one of the reasons the poor are always with us is that the capture of the people's representatives by the well-heeled few, the Chamber of the 1%, is almost always with us too.

> ODOT is fielding an unscientific Survey Monkey survey to enable anyone to voice their opinion on how to fund the 3rd Bridge:
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> https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SYJMC9J
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> Questions 14-20 ask about the four identified funding methods: property tax, gas tax, vehicle registration tax and tolls on all bridges (Marion, Center and the 3rd Bridge).
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> We urge you to take the survey and indicate that you "strongly oppose" all four methods of bridge funding.
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> You can also indicate on Question 12 that "the project should not be built."
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> Do it now!
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> Forward this to your friends and ask them to take the survey. This is a great opportunity to send a strong message that we don't want a 3rd Bridge and we don't want to pay for it.